Two Hour Radio Free Geneva Interaction with the "Free Will Debate" from Houston

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Our mighty fortresses are God's at hand

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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them.

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They're following men instead of the Word of God. I'll ever be amidst the pride

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Of mortal extreme pain And I'm gonna be the one standing on top of my hands,

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Standing on top of my feet, Standing on a stump and crying out, He died for all those who elected, were selected.

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For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work

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God's will His praise and thanks.

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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers. All earth is not his equal.

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I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

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Did we God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten

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Son, that whosoever Ladies and gentlemen,

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James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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I've said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism.

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It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist. Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

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And now, from our underground bunker, deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

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And welcome to Radio Free Geneva on the dividing line. I wasn't planning on doing one today until yesterday.

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I was sent, so you can blame whoever it was that sent it to me, I think via Twitter, I was sent notification from Pulpit and Pen.

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Now, we know that Pulpit and Pen, you know,

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I mean, just one of the leading sources for fair and balanced information on the web today.

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And so I was sent from November 6th, that's yesterday, top five reasons to watch the

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Hernandez -Zachariadis vs. Flowers Pritchett debate, which

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I had never heard of. And so I took a look at it, and it was from November 3rd,

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Fellowship Houston Lutheran Church, I'm not sure they're going to be having any debates there,

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First Evangelical, I'm sorry, First Evangelical Lutheran Church. That's what FEL stands for.

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First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. And just to give you the fifth reason, this is from the ever -elusive, never -to -be -truly -known news division of Pulpit and Pen.

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So there's no name attached, which means there's no particular human being who actually wrote this, see.

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It's just the news division. Yeah, it's a bot. Yeah, it's a bot that writes these.

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The news division. Actually, everybody knows who wrote it. But that person doesn't actually write for Pulpit and Pen anymore.

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So there you go. Anyway, the anathemas. Hernandez uses the term polemical in the first minute of the debate and then proceeds to explain this is not an intramural debate between otherwise like -minded

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Christians, while Flowers and Pritchett, who took the semi -Pelagian side in the debate, affirmed the brotherhood of Hernandez and Zachariadis.

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Hernandez and Zachariadis no short of anathematized their opponents.

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Zachariadis called the two men his brothers at one point, but then paused and apologized for his word, clarifying that they were not his brothers.

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Multiple times the words heresy or heretics were used to describe Flowers and Pritchett. Let's be clear,

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Leighton Flowers hates the gospel, hates the God of Scripture, hates free grace, and seeks to place man upon the glory throne of Christ.

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Flowers has gone on a one -man crusade to defend the virtuous nature of man, attack the doctrines of depravity, and twist the

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Holy Scriptures to make Jesus into a worthless potential savior. Shockingly, Flowers admitted in his opening constructive that his opponents sought to defend the power of God, but that he seeks to defend the character of God by insisting

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God tries to save everyone, bless his heart, but at least he means well. It also tells you who wrote this.

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This also tells you who wrote this. While Namby Pamby, it's supposed to be Pamby, it's a

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B, Namby, they're supposed to rhyme, Namby Pamby. While Namby Pamby interfaith dialogue having bow -tied

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Calvinists might be horrified at the straightforwardness of Hernandez and Zachariadis, the rest of us, that's the rest of us, actually rejoice that God's name and power might be defended and our minions might be rightly handed over as unworthy of theological respect.

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Presuppositionalism oozed out of Hernandez and Zachariadis as they repeatedly refused to give excuses for God and they seemed altogether uninterested in making their positions seem rational or respectable.

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Just stop for a note. So according to the news division, presuppositionalism means that your position, you're not interested in the rationality or respectability of your position, just so you get that.

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Rather, the two Calvinists, I love when a

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Calvinist misspells Calvinist, Calvinists threw down the scripture and repeatedly challenged the two semi -Pelagians for deviating from it.

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So it's not that anyone has any earthy idea who the

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Namby -Pamby interfaith dialogue having bow -tied Calvinists might be. Not sure why there is a need for this, but basically the article was this rejoicing over the high temperature of the debate.

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What was really fascinating is you read the article and you figure it was the

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Calvinists that were just shooting flames out of their eyes. And there is that.

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There's no question about that. But it was both sides. Both sides acted reprehensibly in this debate.

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I mean, just, I feel sorry for the church. I feel sorry for the audience.

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These guys were so focused on each other and going fork and tong at each other that at times they forget about the fact that for some reason the sound recording, whoever set it up, just didn't know what they were doing.

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And there are times it just disappears because someone forgets to grab the one microphone and they think, well, it'll pick me up.

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It didn't. And so the listening level, if you're trying to listen to it, unless you're just sitting there, you can crank it and turn it down, you're not going to make heads or tails out of certain parts of it.

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They're so focused upon going after each other that the audience was irrelevant.

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The other side in their thinking was clearly irrelevant. Neither side could care less about the other side as far as trying to convince them of the truthfulness of your side.

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It's just fire away with all cylinders and get your side, your base, riled up.

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Don't worry about the church. Don't worry about the setting. Don't worry about the audience. And do not worry about anyone who will be watching this later on down the road.

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So the result is exactly what you'd expect.

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But it was surprising to me that the Pulp and Pen article, not only was rejoicing, well,

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OK, it doesn't surprise me that the Pulp and Pen article was rejoicing that the Calvinists were hurling anathemas and all the rest of that stuff.

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Both sides were just completely out of order. Completely out of order.

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This Pritchett guy, oh my goodness. I would expect a self -respecting

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Calvinist or Calvinist to just blast away at just the straw men that were right and left in this guy's presentations.

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It was horrible. It was really offensive, but wasn't much there.

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Uh -oh, someone sent me another screenshot. Have you seen the screenshot? I'm just now. Live screenshot.

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Pulp and Pen, 4 .07 p .m. This is less than three minutes ago. Oh, OK.

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Well, wait a minute. Did I say something yesterday? I must have said something in that article. OK. It took less than 72 hours after someone else debated

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Leighton Flowers before James White chose to attack them. Now remember, who's the

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Namby -Pamby interfaith dialogue? So that wasn't an attack, huh?

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Oh, the hypocrisy of Pulp and Pen is incredible.

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Huh? Love, filled with love, yes. Chose to attack them for not being as open -minded, even -keeled, and reasonable as he is.

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The man's arrogance is almost beyond comprehension. Well, if you want to call that arrogance,

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I'll tell you what, you know who. We're going to play all this stuff, and we're going to give a consistent, biblical discussion of it.

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And you can't. That's the difference. That's the difference. Because you are controlled by your emotions.

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Anyway, so I was sort of... One of the interesting things is, remember the

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Kennedy -Nixon effect? You should probably know yourself well enough to know whether you are better at listening fairly or watching fairly.

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That's something you should really... I think every person these days, especially because we're hit with so much media stuff, you should have an idea which is better for you, to listen to something or to watch something.

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As to how you can filter out prejudices.

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I had seen part of the opening statement when I first downloaded the video, because I knew

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I was going to... I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to work it out as to how

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I was going to get it done before today. I didn't know whether I'd do a program on it. I just wanted to listen to it, and I was going to be running and riding inside, and so I was going to try to watch part of it.

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So I saw a little bit of the opening, specifically with Sonny Hernandez's opening.

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And it's fascinating to me. When I listened to the whole of his opening while running this morning,

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I had heard a scene like the first third. I was astounded at how much different it sounded.

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He sounded considerably less aggressive in audio only than watching it.

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Which is interesting. I'd like to do some reading sometime on what kind of studies have been done as to how we're impacted by all these things.

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So I listened to all the opening presentations today, and then

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I watched from the cross -examination. So the opening presentations and the rebuttals, audio.

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Cross -examination onward was video. So I sort of got a mix of the two.

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Just a few things. I don't...

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The only person that I know... I may have met Sonny Hernandez sometime in the past.

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One of my church members said that he was at G3 in 2015,

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I think. I think that was my first year. So maybe we met at that point.

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I don't know. I do not know these people other than Leighton Flowers. And so I wanted to go into it not having listened to anything that the

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Calvinists had done before. And not knowing who Pritchett was. Even though I found out later he's a member of the

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Evangelical Arminians and stuff like that. Okay, fine. The only person that I have experience with is Leighton Flowers.

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And I have a fair amount of experience with Leighton Flowers. I would like to invite anyone to compare and contrast the debate with Leighton Flowers with this debate.

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And just ask yourself a question. The temperature of the debate.

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Is it good for it to be so high that people are constantly talking over each other?

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That instead of exegesis... I mean, let's just be honest. There is more exegesis in my opening statement in the debate in Dallas than in the entirety of the two hours of this debate.

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There's no question about that. That's just a fact. That's not opinion. That's just pure fact.

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Once again, by the way, Leighton has the same notebook he had before. And I'm sure he has the plastic -covered pages.

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Because for Leighton, it's... I've got my notes. And I'm going to make my presentation.

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And I'm going to preach. And that's what he does. It doesn't really matter what the other side is saying. You just sort of make sure to preach yourself there.

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And that's what he did. So that didn't change much. But you just compare... Just take the time.

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Listen to Romans 9 debate. They'll both be frustrating. But which one actually accomplished anything other than sloganeering and just blasting away at the other side?

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I was... I mean, there's just... I'm sorry. There's just no way that you can say, Oh, yeah, there was so much deep exegesis and that found in this debate.

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No, there wasn't. There wasn't. And to a point, you can control your time.

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And you can make the decision to focus upon... You can either let yourself be drawn away by the other side, or you can focus upon what you want to accomplish.

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I believe, as a Namby Pamby interfaith dialogue doing bowtie wearing

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Calvinist, I believe that the purpose of doing debates is to seek to honor

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God, honor his word, bless his people, and convert the lost. And the only power

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I know that can do that is the word and the spirit together. So the more of me and my sloganeering...

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And when I say sloganeering, I mean using slogans that will fire up your base, but does not necessarily communicate to this side at all.

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So I've complained that during the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, there's been a lot of just constant repetition of discussion of the five solas without necessarily a whole lot of real understanding of how they function then, how they should function now, what has changed since then as far as Rome's position, how we should make different applications, et cetera, et cetera.

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So when I'm talking about sloganeering, I'm just talking about repeating the buzz phrases that get your particular people all excited.

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Both sides did that constantly with escalating volume and speed of speech as the temperature got higher and higher.

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And then there were all these just utterly unnecessary shots that were being taken, just thrown in.

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And this is, look, I understand that there is a temptation.

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When you're in front of an audience, someone's misrepresenting you, someone's being unkind to you.

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Zingers are always a temptation. And sometimes you can have a zinger that is actually appropriate.

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I think the greatest all -time zinger in 161 debates for me so far was back in the debate on Mary with Jerry Matitix long, long ago.

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And the audience was getting frustrated. Everybody was getting frustrated because everybody could see that Jerry was dancing around the fact that on the one hand, he wanted to say all of your church fathers were in support of him, but then he wouldn't name a single one of them.

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And so finally, he makes that statement.

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Well, I can't give you every single one. And my response was, I'll take just one.

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And the whole place broke up. There's applause and laughter because they're all thinking the exact same thing.

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So that was just, okay, they're time for zingers. But the insulting zingers, they, you know, again, they'll fire up your base.

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But who are you doing the debate for? See, the motivation for debate really is important.

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And I've certainly learned to clarify that over the past number of years.

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I want to leave something behind that is going to be worthwhile for decades after I'm gone. And that means there's just stuff that might scratch my pride, but it's going to detract from the value of the debate in the long run.

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So I can't do it. I'm not going to do it. So if you want an example of a clinker, also in the great debates on Long Island, when

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Robertson Jenis made some offhand remark about my allegedly claiming infallibility or something, that's it, you think you're infallible.

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Yeah, it just crashed like a lead balloon. I mean, it was just, and Jerry's joke about Mary throwing the first, let him cast the first stone and a rock comes flying in and Jenis goes,

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Mom, remember that one? Oh, it was just horrible. I mean, it was painfully horrible because you're sitting there and you start to look out at the audience and everybody in the audience is just staring at him like, did he just say that?

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The Catholics in the audience are staring at him going, did he just say that?

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Nah, he didn't. Did he say that? Yeah, you heard the same thing? Oh, wow. Yeah, so there you go.

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Anyway, so there really has to be thought on the part of at least somebody in the debate.

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Why am I doing this? Because that's going to determine how high the temperature gets on your side.

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You can't control the guy on the other side or guys in this case. And you may not be able to control if you're doing a two -on -two debate, which means you really got to be careful who you choose when you do two -on -two debates.

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I haven't done many of them. But it's up to you what the temperature level gets to on your side, the volume level.

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And the volume level on this was just, it made it, like I said, I have a feeling that poor

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Lutheran Church was just going like this halfway through because there just wasn't any self -control on either side.

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And look, this is an important subject. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that your self -righteous bloviation is really going to help this situation.

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And there were some other things. Before we get into it, because I'm going to play some of this stuff.

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Well, Chad Daniels says, no, the greatest zinger was the Peter Stravinskis purgatory comment.

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That wasn't a zinger. That was something he said that just left all of us going, he was serious.

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Well, he was serious because he seriously wanted to leave. I've never had any opponent that just was pulling at his collar and he just wanted out of that place and it was so bad by the time we got to that point.

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It was a long night and he wanted to leave and pay me now or pay me later. But that wasn't something

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I said. That was something he said. Anyways, one of the things that comes up in the debate was, you know, once the cross -ex started, we'll hear this, the

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Arminians slash semi -Pelagians slash sometimes dancing right Indo -Pelagianism guys are asking questions about what their position really is.

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And it's like, we're not going to talk about that. Well, wait a minute. Do you hold the 1689

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London Convention? Well, no, no, no. Well, what about what it says? Well, we're not going to debate about that. We're only here to talk about the

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Bible. Well, they ended up saying there is no such thing as free will.

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And one of them, Zachariadis, says, I don't believe in compatibilism.

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And I'm like, okay, then what do you believe in?

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What's the other option? And didn't seem to want to provide that kind of information.

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But just for the record, the modern language, 1689, chapter 9,

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In the natural order, God has endued man's will with liberty and the power to act upon choice. So it is neither forced from without, nor by any necessity arising from within itself, compelled to do good or evil.

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Now, if you're going to quote that, then you're going to want to take into consideration not only the specific

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Baptist authors, but when the language is identical to the Westminster Confession, you can go back to them as well to have a meaningful and full understanding of what they mean.

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I've never found Leighton Flowers to be willing to do that. Once again, it was the same old, well, we're going to hear a section here where I would say, without question, that Leighton wandered directly into heresy, saying that we create, creatio ex nihilo.

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I mean, that's just bald heresy. No question about it.

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And it's all in defense of the almighty will of man. There's no question about it. He does not start with God.

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His is not a theocentric system. It's an anthropocentric system. It starts from man and reasons upward to God. It's not exegetical.

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It's all based upon creating analogies and all the rest of the stuff.

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And sadly, the Calvinists got into doing analogies too, instead of just allowing the word of God to have its effect.

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But be it as it may, there is a background to what the Confession says when it talks about nor by any necessity arising from within itself compelled to do good or evil.

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That's just the beginning. That's talking about as created. And then in his state of innocency, man had freedom and power to will and to do what was good and acceptable to God, yet being unstable, it was possible for him to fall from his uprightness.

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And so the Confession recognizes that there is a difference between Adam's original state and the state of the redeemed indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit of God and then the state of the redeemed in the perfected state. We get more in Christ than Adam lost in his sin.

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Romans chapter 5 again. As the consequences of his fall into a state of sin, man has lost all ability to will the performance of any of those works spiritually good that accompany salvation.

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This, of course, is what they absolutely reject. As a natural and spiritual man, he is dead in sin and altogether opposed that which is good.

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Hence, he is not able by any strength of his own to turn himself to God or even to prepare himself to turn to God.

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Now, obviously, I would think that in a debate on free will, there are so many texts that the

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Calvinists could have gone to and just sat right on top of the text and beaten the other side over the head.

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It's not that they would have stayed on topic. I realize they're not going to, but you just stay on target. Stay on target.

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Stay on target. You know that type of thing? It didn't happen.

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The Calvinists let it fly all over the place from God's decree to man's will to every little thing in between.

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It was all over the place. And so there you go. When God converts a sinner and brings him out of sin in the state of grace, he frees him from his natural bondage to sin and by his grace alone, he enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good.

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Nevertheless, certain corruptions remain in the sinner so that his will is never completely and perfectly held in captivity to that which is good, but it also entertains evil.

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It is not until man enters the state of glory that he is made perfectly and immutably free to will that which is good and that alone.

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There's chapter 9 of the Baptist Confession of Faith. Evidently, neither side held that in the debate.

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So I have to confess I don't exactly know what this debate was about, but it didn't represent historic

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Calvinism. If you're not a compatibilist and if you do not believe that man has creaturely free will, you have to make a differentiation between an autonomous will and a creaturely will.

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If you don't believe those things, what side are you on? I don't know. I don't know. But there you go.

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There you go. So what I want to do, I'm not sure how much time we're going to have. This could go on forever and ever.

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But I want to play. I even bought a new video player today.

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Just one that had an easier indexing program in it.

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And take a look at what was said and we'll cover as much as we can.

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Can't play it all. Obviously, it's two hours long. We're not going to do that. But I want to catch a few things.

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I see we're having problems. Yes? We're recording. Got some dips and stuff going along the way.

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And are the cameras recording? No. So this whole thing could just go bye -bye like the other one did.

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So you're going to come in here and by memory repeat all of it if that happens.

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Just so we go. Okay. All right. Let's dive into it.

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And I want you to understand a lot of people think of debate as being something that's just divisive. Why are you debating?

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You're a Christian. You shouldn't debate with each other. This is a part of education. Matter of fact, I would say men really engage with this kind of education maybe more so than just lecturers.

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And so I appreciate my opponents for taking this on as an opportunity for us to learn from each other as brothers. And I want you to know that I love these brothers in Christ and that we treat each other with respect, that there's polemics in our discussions.

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We're going to strongly disagree with each other on some points. We do love one another and I want you to understand that. So there you have at least from Leighton's...

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Now, the other side hasn't spoken yet. And they're basically going to repudiate what he just said. Nah, not for us.

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I'm not sure just how much they knew about each other beforehand or what, but there you go.

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And you may notice I am playing at 1 .1, so I'm playing a little fast because, again, we've got to get through all this stuff.

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Let's dive in. Oh, by the way, have you noticed? Does anybody else notice? It's the non -Calvinists that have the beards.

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I just thought that was strange. All right, allow me to sum up our disagreement. Make it real simple, okay?

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Our opponents believe that our eternal destinies are decided by God before we are even born without any regard to our future choices or our actions.

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In other words, Calvinists start with God and the doctrine of God, the doctrine of God as creator, and the doctrine of God as creator, therefore, having a decree.

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So, in other words, when God creates, He doesn't just throw the cosmic dice. He has a purpose.

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He has an intention. As it says in Job, He is unique. He has many decrees.

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The whole foundation of the knowledge of God and the demonstration of the false gods against whom

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He has contrasted in Isaiah based upon the same thing. Yes, the fundamental difference is that we start with God and it is through the lens of God's revelation of Himself that we then look at His creatures, all of His creatures, including man and His purposes for man.

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We do not subservient the biblical revelation of God's nature to any presupposed philosophies or psychologies concerning the creature man.

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We start with God. We are a revelation -dependent people.

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It's a whole lot easier to start with man because they don't have to be revelation -dependent because we can talk of our own experience.

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We can reason from ourselves. But we start with God and reason from God down to His creatures.

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And so we accept the biblical teaching and it is a plain biblical teaching, not an implicit teaching drawn from this or that, but the explicit statement of Scripture that God does whatever

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He pleases in all of His realm, including in the realm of mankind. It is specifically stated in Psalm 33, in numerous places in Isaiah, in Psalm 135, 6, in Daniel 4.

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And we can go through each one of these exegetically. We don't have to just read them.

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We could actually go into them in the original language, in the original context, and walk through them.

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Unfortunately, most debates don't allow that. We really someday should have the type of debate they used to have back in the days immediately prior to the

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Reformation. Well, they did it afterwards, too. But the type of debate that, for example, took place in Leipzig, where you literally have multiple days where you spend the whole day in debate and then take a break overnight and come back the next day.

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There's an opportunity for doing further research and taking certain questions and going to the library. Those were debates, man.

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Those were marathons, and they actually required an incredible amount of concentration and attention span on the part of individuals, which may make them utterly irrelevant any longer.

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But those were debates. And in that situation,

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I am absolutely confident that the Reformed position would be able to go to the mat in the exegesis of the text and thoroughly refute the other side.

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I do not believe that there is a consistent exegesis of the text that leads you to this

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God who somehow has some type of magical knowledge of the future that has nothing to do with His decrees.

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I don't think you could substantiate that if you could be pressed constantly to actually deal with the text.

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These two -hour type debates allow you to hide behind a smoke screen of all sorts of sloganeering.

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And that is unfortunate. Therefore, whether we go to heaven or hell has absolutely nothing to do with us.

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It is an inevitable consequence beyond our control. On Calvinism... Okay, again, this is a gross misrepresentation.

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It is the standard latent flowers. I'm going to make it either or. I know you all say that there is absolute justice, that every person who goes to hell does not want to be in the presence of God, that every person who goes to hell loves their sin.

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But because you have this decree thing, I'm going to ignore all that. I'm going to ignore the fact that you say the decree is what makes the actions in time real.

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I'm going to ignore all that. I'm going to throw it all out. I know I claim to be a Calvinist, but I'm going to demonstrate that I never understood it, and I will not accurately represent it no matter what.

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I just won't do it because my job depends on it. I will misrepresent Calvinism at every turn.

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That's latent flowers. I'm sorry. We've documented it. We've demonstrated it. We did the debate. We did the programs afterwards.

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We've gone over this over and over again. That's just his approach. Okay? He cannot refute real

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Calvinism, so he creates the straw man. That's latent. We know that. That's just how it is.

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But here's the problem. I cannot psychoanalyze. I can guess.

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I know some of the pressures, and I know some of the people, and I know the position that he's in. They're in Texas and Southwestern and stuff like that.

38:09

I get it. But what people do, and what I think the men on the other side do, is they look at this, and they go,

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Aha! All right. This is an important subject. Yes, it is. Therefore, because he does this,

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I will arrogate to myself the power and ability to judge him eternally.

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Now, there's the problem because I can tell you some of the pressures on latent, and I can't explain to you why he can have things explained to him so clearly, and he just, you know, just...

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How many times has he reviewed our debate now? It's just like, how much more do you really have to say about it?

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I mean, come on. The very fact that he keeps going over it shows that he knows what happened there. But in spite of all that, how many, it doesn't matter how many hours that I would listen to him talk,

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I cannot look into his heart. And so, it's taking that next step and going,

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Ah, if you disagree with me, and if you engage in misrepresentation, which he is, if you throw out straw men on something as important as this,

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I think that means you're not a Christian. Well, at that point, I go,

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Stop. Okay? I haven't been given that authority, and you haven't either.

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And if, you know, I know all sorts of Christians who, if I were to really probe, have substantial misunderstandings of very important things.

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And I'm not just saying, you know, if I were to ask the vast majority of evangelicals to accurately define the term perichoresis, how many could?

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5 %? 3 %? 2 %? Perichoresis is an important thing.

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The relationship with divine persons. It's important. Well, I just didn't know the phrase. Still, we have to be very, very careful because the tendency on our part is that, you know,

40:20

I listen to this, and I say, Look, what he's presenting, when he gets to the end and starts talking about, we create our desires, creatio ex nihilo, that's lunacy.

40:32

I mean, that is, I mean, this is what happens when you fight against truth and defense of tradition.

40:39

You go off into some really weird stuff. The question is, the question is, does that make him a heretic who is damned as a result?

40:53

And if you're going to make a final statement like that, man, I tell you, you had better have done more than just a bunch of sloganeering and yelling and screaming.

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That should be the end of lengthy conversations. And really, to be honest with you, that's really, that's really only the type of thing that a church should ever make a statement on, not individual.

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Leave that to the church. Focus on his teaching, refute the teaching, warn people against it, and then pray for him.

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Leave him in God's hands. If that makes me namby -pamby, great, because I may end up in the room in the mansion in heaven next to his.

41:37

Okay? And I don't want to have to be explaining why I blasted him into the flames of perdition just because I irrigated to myself a power and a capacity that not only

41:55

I don't have, but I didn't need to exercise. Leave it to God. Focus on the teaching and focus on the teaching using scripture, not insults, not wrapping your

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Calvinistic robes around yourself and just saying, well, according to Calvinistic orthodoxy, who cares?

42:18

Unless you're sitting in a room of people who are all claiming to be

42:23

Orthodox Calvinists don't even cite that.

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They do. The other side did in calling them heretics. Well, according to Calvinist orthodoxy, that's heresy.

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Well, that's really not going to get you very far with these folks, but just keep that in mind.

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You have absolutely nothing to do with where you spend eternity. As John Calvin...

42:46

Again, it's just not true. God has a divine decree, and that decree includes the responsible actions of men, their will, their desires, and what they do.

42:56

You may not like that, but that's what Daniel 4 says. That's what Ephesians 1 says.

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That's what John 6 says. If you actually walk through it... Don't... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Leighton.

43:07

I'm sorry, but your attempts at dealing with John 6 were simply pathetic. They're simply pathetic.

43:15

They are absolutely indefensible. The texts are there, and the very fact that you cannot deal with real

43:25

Calvinism says a lot about your claim to have been one and the level of understanding you had and, right now, the level of influence of tradition and,

43:36

I'll just be straightforward, political pressure coming out of Fort Worth. Calvin himself said, quote,

43:42

God ordains by His judgments that some from their mother's womb are destined irrevocably to eternal death in order to glorify

43:51

God's name in their perdition. Is this what the Bible teaches? I do not believe so.

43:58

All throughout the Scripture, we see the concept of... Okay, let me just mention, because now he's going to get to the choice issue, which, again, has next to nothing to do with what we're saying, because what we're saying is

44:10

God's decree is the very ground of what makes human choice what it is. It protects humanity from other forces in the universe.

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It is God's intention to create time and that the decisions in time are real.

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That does not mean they're outside of God's sovereign control. You just don't like the fact that this biblical teaching is more than just two dimensions.

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It's three -dimensional, in fact, probably more than that. It's deeper than you want to go.

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You just flatten it out all to two and say, see, that doesn't work when I do it that way, and so we've got to go this way, and it's going to be the way of exalting man and man's capacity and man's power and so on and so forth.

44:52

Well, okay. We've seen it, been there, done that. Not going to invest too much time to go back over that again and again and again, but this is what you're hearing.

45:03

It's man -centered. It's not God -centered. It doesn't start with the doctrine of God. It doesn't start with His immutability.

45:09

It doesn't start with His sovereignty, His purposes in creation, nothing like that. It just can't.

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Choice. As my colleague pointed out, this is sometimes called libertarian free will, but the word choice is really all we need here.

45:25

You look in Webster's The Ability to Select Between Available Options. You don't need a philosophy degree to get this. It's really simple.

45:30

You have a choice to make. We see choice throughout all of Scripture. From the very beginning in the garden, we see God finish creating mankind in His own image, and God declared it was very good.

45:41

God made man good, and I think all of us on this stage would say He did not create a sinful or fallen man.

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Yet, somehow, mysteriously, that good man and that good woman chose to sin.

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That's free will. He could have resisted the temptation, but he chose to rebel. That's libertarian free will.

46:01

And again, just quickly, obviously you must make a distinction between Adam in the pre -fallen state and those of us after Adam.

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Unless you go the full -plagian route and say we're all a new Adam. And sometimes Layton dances right on that line and a few times falls over into the hot boiling lava on the other side, but tries to drag himself back over to the at least semi -plagian side once in a while.

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But that's what he's playing with. There's no question that there's the tiptoeing right along the line.

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But we cannot deal with the nature of Adam's will because we have basically no divine revelation upon which to go to surmise anything about it on any solid basis.

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The only discussion we have of will that is meaningful is of the fallen will and the relationship of that will to God's grace.

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You can speculate all you want. You can pretend like you know stuff. But when you ask, well, where does the

47:04

Bible actually talk about that? Well, there's two and a half chapters in the Bible and it's purely implicit at that point.

47:13

And then after that, you're only dealing with fallen man. Got to keep that in mind, at least if your desire is to have a biblical rather than philosophical understanding.

47:34

Now, he's going to misuse this text a lot because he's going to try to take it from the context in which it was uttered to Christian people in regards to not having love of the world, not having the love of the things of the world, that's not of the

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Father, the contrast between this world system and the world to which we are called to live in, to look forward to, the now and the not yet, the

48:01

Holy Land. That's not what 1 John is not saying that in God's sovereign decree, there is no place for evil desires.

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Because again, even though he will attempt to mention

48:20

Genesis 50 and Genesis 20 and Isaiah 10, he just sort of throws them out there because he knows the text never engages them in any meaningful fashion and sadly wasn't pressed to by the

48:31

Calvinists. I mean, that would have been one of the first things they went to is he threw out these really weak little excuses and if I had been on the

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Calvinistic side, I would have focused upon that and required some type of meaningful response.

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Because remember, when I debated Leighton and I started asking him questions about the exact text of Romans 9, he didn't want to go there.

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He wanted primarily to stick to issues of man's ability and things like that.

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There was a reason for that. And when he did, that's where he just made some really major errors.

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I was able to point out, well, you said this group was this, but up here it's this. And well, it was just really obvious to anyone who's really following the debate that he had just made a major mistake and that his entire system of interpretation could not do what

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I did. And that is start at the beginning, actually start back in chapter 8, walk through the text, let it speak for itself, let it flow.

49:31

There you go. Some things, namely men's evil desires, that are not of God.

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They are separate from God. Which, by the way, when we defend free will, what we're defending here is

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His holiness. There was a huge leap there. I'm not sure if you caught it.

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They are separate from God. What does that mean? The point he's eventually going to make is that this is not a part of God's decree.

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Maybe this is the Karashio -Exnihilo thing. Maybe this is what man creates. And so there are things that exist in God's creation that God didn't create.

50:09

That's pretty scary in and of itself. It reminds me a little bit of the Molinist and whoever the car dealer is and all the rest of that stuff.

50:17

You don't end up with a consistent doctrine of creation from these folks. Once you exalt man above the status that Bible actually gives him, you end up fundamentally violating the biblical doctrine of God as the creator.

50:32

There's no two ways about that. So he's misusing this text that is not talking in the context he is using it.

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And then he just leapt from there to we are defending God's character and His holiness and so on and so forth.

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And well, you know, I'm sure he believes that. I'm sure that he has made in his mind that connection.

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Unfortunately, it requires him to redefine the position that he's denying to allow him to make that kind of statement.

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Because I really believe that God's holiness, I think

51:11

I can make a strong argument that his position is extremely problematic in regards to God's holiness,

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His righteousness. Why would God create a universe where all this stuff is going to happen? He knows it's going to happen. He doesn't have a purpose for it.

51:24

I mean, I can make all sorts of arguments from my perspective on that. And I think they're better arguments.

51:29

I think they're more consistent arguments. But that kind of leap is real common in Leighton Flowers' stuff.

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Evil desires have their source outside of God. Those desires are from the creature, not the creator.

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As A .W. Tozer convincingly argues, God decided not which choices we would make, but that we would be free to make them and that a

51:51

God less than sovereign would be afraid to grant that kind of freedom. Choice is not only seen in the garden... Again, that's one of his favorite quotes, but it's just a quote.

51:59

What does it mean? What's the biblical grounds for this? I mean, if we make application to the specific texts where God's sovereignty and His purposes intersect with man's, if we ask about the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of free will choices that were involved just in the situation in Isaiah 10, let alone in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and all the different attitudes of the

52:28

Jews and the Romans and Herod and Pontius Pilate and all the rest of this stuff, you're talking about a tremendous amount of quote unquote free will that had to come together in one particular way over generations to bring about God's intended result.

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And we're being told here that's not a part of God's decree because so much of that was tainted by sin.

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Well, that's just... And if that's creatio ex nihilo, how in the world could God even have knowledge of it?

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I mean, I think if you were to push, I think Leighton needs to be careful here. If he continues this creatio ex nihilo thing,

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I can't see how he can remain as an Orthodox Southern Baptist. Southern Baptists have specifically gotten rid of the idea of open theism.

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It is against the Baptist faith and message. You can't be an open theist and sign the Baptist faith and message.

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And yet, if you say that man's free will decisions create something new, this would be beyond God's knowledge.

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You could not provide a meaningful ground for God to be able to know something that is created creatio ex nihilo, out of nothing, out or into nothing.

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And so, I mean, the whole idea of mankind being able to even do that, I think, is thoroughly outside the realm of Southern Baptist Orthodoxy.

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I think he should be aware of that. It's also seen throughout all the prophets.

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Isaiah 118, for one example, says, Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow.

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In other words, this is sociological. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will be blessed.

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You will eat of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.

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There is choice. And again, no one denies the fact that mankind has been made with the capacity of choice.

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The question is, how do we choose? What is our nature? And is there not in Scripture specific teaching regarding man's inabilities to do what is right before God?

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There is. And so one side is taking into consideration all of what

54:49

Scripture teaches on this subject. And the other side is, again, flattening out, two -dimensional, can't allow for all that.

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That's too complex. We need to have just a real simplistic viewpoint here. And that's what you end up with.

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Deuteronomy 30, as Jonathan just mentioned, I set before you life and death, blessing and curses. Choose life,

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God says. Ezekiel says, cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed. By making yourself a new heart and a new spirit, why will you die,

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O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God. So turn and live.

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Joshua called out to the people saying, choose you this day whom you will serve. And Jesus, of course, he came along saying, whosoever believes will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

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And he goes on to say, come to me, all who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The Apostle Paul.

55:40

Okay, you know, again, cherry picking. Not allowing the full counsel of God.

55:46

All those texts are there. They're beautiful texts. But in the very same text where you have everyone looking and believing on the

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Son will have eternal life. Sentence before is, no one's going to look and believe unless drawn by the

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Father. All the Father gives him will come to him. Again, it's just balance. And that's why I've always felt like, and again,

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I think it's the background. I think it's Southwestern. I think it's Paige Patterson. I think it's the whole issue there.

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But there seems to be a real level of desperation in this perspective.

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And the fact of the matter is, it doesn't fly well with people who really want to have serious answers to serious questions.

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Because eventually you start seeing, you know, they just keep going back to the same thing and they won't go any deeper.

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They won't allow, you know, the whole counsel of God to stand on this issue. And, you know, for people who have a prejudice against Calvinism or will, you know, if you come to the

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Lord in a church and the pastor of that church warns you against Calvinism, well, it's pretty natural for you to have a prejudice, a bias, you know, maybe not listen honestly or carefully to someone who's presenting that.

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I get it. I've seen it many, many times. I understand that. But I think that's what's happening for a lot of these folks.

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But once you get past that and you want to start having serious understanding, this kind of response just isn't going to cut it.

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It just strikes me as really desperate on Layton's part. And I just want to make sure that Christians, Reformed Christians, don't adopt the same desperation.

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You know, I just remind folks that when Norman Geisler came out with his book in 2000, as I recall, you know,

57:43

I remember sitting there going, oh man, there's going to be so many people that are confused by this. And there have been.

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There's no question about it. There have been. What I didn't see was that by responding to it in the way we did, which

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I would imagine the news division at Pulpit and Pen, though they didn't used to view it this way, would have to now view my respectful response to Norman Geisler as namby -pamby.

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And yet, I can assure you, I know of entire churches that have been founded because of the

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Potter's Freedom. And I don't know of churches that have been founded by the slash and burn methodology of others.

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But when I responded in the Potter's Freedom, because we did so with respect, because we did so wanting not to get ourselves in the way of the message,

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I think it's very, very fair to say that that book, Geisler's book, which initially

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I'm like, oh, it's going to cause so much trouble, has ended up being used by God to his glory, which we should have recognized.

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We just didn't know how. And so in the same way, we can't respond in the same fashion and have the same kind of desperation to try to get people to believe what we have to say.

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Part of the lack of fire -breathing, lightning -strike type of response that I would give to these folks is because I have confidence that God's going to do things the way he wants to do things.

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He's going to accomplish his will. I don't have to go insane about it.

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I'm just a tool. That's all. Nothing more. We can have confidence that God's going to do what's right.

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Paul continued this message by saying in 2 Corinthians 5 .20, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

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We implore you. We beg you on behalf of Christ. Be reconciled to God.

59:58

Choice is implicit in each of these and so many more passages throughout the entire Bible. And of course, we would agree.

01:00:05

We just would not agree that it is an autonomous choice. We recognize that biblically, choices are subsumed under the higher category of God's purposes in creation.

01:00:19

And we accept when the Bible says that God holds us accountable for those choices based upon what we know, not upon what we can't possibly know, which is, of course,

01:00:30

God's sovereign decree. And again, if you want the greatest refutation of this shallow, two -dimensional perspective that Leighton Flowers and others are throwing out there,

01:00:44

I think they figure just the mass of video will be enough to win it in the final day.

01:00:51

It's the Incarnation. I really believe the Incarnation is the perfect refutation of this perspective because it demonstrates that from God's perspective, time is real.

01:01:06

The time of Jesus' birth, predestined, predestined, announced hundreds of years beforehand.

01:01:12

I'm sorry. You can pretend that you accept the basis of God's prophecy in some type of simple foreknowledge, but the reality is if you really believe what

01:01:24

Leighton Flowers says here about kreashio ex nihilo decisions, then you have to be an open theist or you have to adopt something that allows for mankind to act in unexpected ways and that destroys prophecy.

01:01:40

God prophesied when the Messiah would come, exactly what he would do. You end up destroying the very means by which you could even determine that Jesus was the

01:01:48

Messiah. This is not the perspective of the writers, and it's fascinating.

01:01:56

I think it was Pritchett who tried to do the nobody before Augustine thing.

01:02:01

Again, you just have to be utterly ignorant of the early church to make that kind of statement.

01:02:08

Obviously, he hasn't read Clement. Obviously, he hasn't read Mathe Testa Diagnosius.

01:02:16

It's a lot of that, and at one point, I'm going to have to see if I can catch it because, again, the sound recording was highly problematic, but at one point,

01:02:25

I thought I heard Leighton use the Gnostic term again, and again,

01:02:31

I'll just be perfectly honest with you. If you identify my Reformed beliefs as Gnosticism, I have no respect for you because I know

01:02:40

Gnosticism. I've read all of the Gnostic Gospels. I have all of Nag Hammadi in my library.

01:02:47

I've spent a lot of time on this stuff. I really know Gnosticism, and so if you want to try to make that argument, you're grandstanding, and you're not being honest, and I don't have any respect for you.

01:02:58

I'm sorry. When I say respect, I mean respect for your alleged opinion on a scholarly level because you're just not being honest.

01:03:08

Anyone presents that to me in a debate, and I have enough time, I'll shred it, and that's not arrogance on my part. That's simple facts.

01:03:15

I mean, it's just, just stop it. Just stop it. It does, you know, unless, again, if all you want to do is rile up your base, then do whatever you want, but this

01:03:29

Gnosticism stuff is just absurd on the highest level. But what about those few times throughout the text where it seems that men make choices that are really seemingly determined by God behind the scenes?

01:03:42

For example, Joseph's brothers are sold into slavery, and years later, he declares, what you meant for evil,

01:03:48

God meant for good. Or what about the Assyrians? Okay, now, he's going to go through the major texts here.

01:03:55

Listen carefully to what he tries to do with them. First of all, he's trying to say there's just a few of them when the reality is, in light of the overarching statements of Daniel chapter 4,

01:04:08

Psalm 135, 6, texts like that, this is a pan -biblical concept, a foundational understanding of God's relationship to his world.

01:04:22

It's all over the place. In Isaiah chapter 10, they were used as a means of discipline against Israel, and yet God still holds them culpable for what they did.

01:04:31

And in fact, it goes directly into the fact that that is not what their intention was, but it was what

01:04:41

God's intention was. So you have the differing intentions of the moral players, and God holds them accountable.

01:04:49

And there were thousands of them. Because in Isaiah chapter 10, okay, Genesis 50, you've got a fairly small number of people.

01:04:57

In Isaiah 10, you have tens of thousands of people engaging in free will choices.

01:05:08

And God says, I'm in control of all of it. And I'm bringing about exactly what

01:05:13

I intend. And when you act on the basis of what you desire, I'm going to judge you, even though I'm using you.

01:05:20

It's right there, if you want to see it. If you want to see how all of Scripture can be harmonious with itself, rather than just throwing parts out or having to bring in human philosophy.

01:05:32

If you want to see it, then you can see. And see, for me, I know that God wants his people to see it.

01:05:40

And therefore, it's just my privilege to get to be used to show it to folks. And he's going to accomplish his purpose.

01:05:49

And I can sleep well at night. And honestly,

01:05:55

I think some of you people out there, you honestly sit around at night and you lose sleep trying to figure out some way of taking another shot at me or coming up with a response to this, that, or the other thing.

01:06:06

And meanwhile, I am sawing logs and feeling good because God's accomplishing his purposes.

01:06:15

And I just rejoice in getting to be used in it. And if that ends tomorrow, that ends tomorrow.

01:06:21

There you go. The kingdom's going to go on one way or the other. What about Pharaoh?

01:06:27

He was hardened by God. And yet he's held accountable for what he did. Or the biggest example of them all, the crucifixion.

01:06:35

Acts 2 .23, it says, Jesus is delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God.

01:06:41

Don't these passages... Yeah, in Acts 4, the early church specifically makes the statement that what

01:06:48

Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Jews and the Gentiles, the Romans, did, they did according to God's predestined plan.

01:07:01

And what I love about that one, more than the Acts 2 text, is you have the specific individuals representing different groups, different motivations, and they all had to act in concert to bring about the greatest redemptive act of history.

01:07:22

The idea of man's autonomous will. Maybe they say, well, it's just in these instances.

01:07:28

The problem is, these instances, we somehow think that we can take these major events and just separate them out, and you've got the rest of humanity just going on.

01:07:39

We're all connected together. Pontius Pilate was the result of tens of thousands, tens of thousands of free will choices, as was

01:07:53

Herod, as was every one of the Roman soldiers, as was the Jewish leaders, as was their interaction with one another.

01:08:01

You're talking about a whole lot of sovereignty here. And yes, I'm using the term sovereignty in its biblical sense, because the abstract idea that Pritchett presented is not a biblical concept of sovereignty.

01:08:16

Anybody who understands kingship, especially in the old world, the ancient world, would know that you can't have some type of static, merely philosophical sovereignty.

01:08:26

That certainly wasn't how Nebuchadnezzar understood it in Daniel 4, by any stretch of the imagination.

01:08:32

Do these passages mean that people really aren't making free choices at all? Do these passages mean that God is really secretly,

01:08:39

He's secretly behind the scenes deciding everything, that every single human being will always decide for all eternity, and punishing them anyway?

01:08:47

Now notice that, you know, you hear the spin. You hear trying to bring other things in to try to poison the well, rather than going, doesn't this demonstrate that the players involved in each one of these, the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, making choices, from a human perspective, we don't see any external interference going on, anything like that at all.

01:09:14

Instead, we, in hindsight, see God not taking human actions and fitting it into a plan that He comes up with later on, but we see, oh, what's that term?

01:09:28

Oh, compatibilism. We see that it's compatible between what the Bible teaches about man's heart and man's actions and his making choices and God's purpose.

01:09:39

And somehow God is big enough to actually work all of this to His own glory and not be in a position of going, oh man, look at what just happened.

01:09:49

I've been working for 150 years to bring somebody that could be a prophet in this place, and they just made the wrong decision and that whole line,

01:09:58

I'm going to have to start all over again. And there are people who actually come to that conclusion. There are people who actually end up coming to that type of conclusion, that God just has to keep trying and trying and trying and it's like, wow, that's not what the

01:10:11

New Testament writers believed. Not by, well, any, I'm sorry, not just New Testament writers, not sure why

01:10:17

I said that, biblical writers believed. What he means by this? I don't think so. I'll explain why.

01:10:24

Does proof that God works to bring about one event also prove that He works to bring about every other event?

01:10:32

Now, here's where you would think that you would get an exegetically based counter -argument against what these texts are saying.

01:10:42

Instead, what you get is, well, I'm going to make the argument that sure, in certain instances,

01:10:50

God has the freedom to make sure that something happens.

01:10:56

But I'm going to use this analogy and, of course, Leighton Flowers is the king of analogy, the king of non -biblical analogy.

01:11:03

He doesn't do exegesis, he does analogical theology,

01:11:09

I guess might be the term. Anyway, so we're going to come up with an analogy. And so, just because God does this one thing with Israel and Isaiah 10, and this other thing over here in Genesis 50, and the big thing in the cross, well, that doesn't mean

01:11:27

He's doing everything. And so what you do is, you want to try to create space for some kind of autonomy of man that allows for God once in a while, just a few times, to actually accomplish something.

01:11:47

Well, here's the problem. Prophecy, in the Old Testament, tells us more than just the coming of the

01:11:56

Messiah. It tells us about what the Messiah is going to be doing, and the character of His Messiahship, and what

01:12:02

He's going to accomplish, and there's all this stuff in Daniel about the kingdoms, and so forth. And the problem is, that involves tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, could we say millions of people?

01:12:14

And their free will choices. There is a beautiful fabric of God's decree in time in what

01:12:28

He's accomplishing, and it's beautiful. It's woven together as we will see in eternity in perfection.

01:12:34

We can't see it now. We cannot see it now. We see through a glass darkly, but it's there.

01:12:47

And Leighton Flower's position does not have any room for that.

01:12:54

There is nothing but an endgame plan.

01:13:01

And all the details about what gets there are up in the air. They're up in the air.

01:13:07

And I would argue that his position, at least the open theists, will fight against every single one of those texts.

01:13:16

Genesis 50, Isaiah 10. They have to. They can't have any providence, because they recognize if there's any providence, the whole idea of their ultimate goal of libertarian will just simply doesn't fly.

01:13:33

Simply doesn't fly. And that's the case here. Of course not. That's a non sequitur. Appealing to God's sovereign work to ensure the redemption of something so as to prove that God sovereignly works to bring about all the sin that was redeemed is an absurd and self -defeating argument.

01:13:49

Now, what Leighton likes to do is he likes to create summaries without having actually presented the argument.

01:13:58

And very often, the summary is inaccurate. So, it sounds good, but if you're not really following along, you're like, oh, well, okay.

01:14:09

Well, all right. What you just heard didn't follow from what was said earlier. Unfortunately, well,

01:14:20

I'll try. Let's try it again. The redemption of something so as to prove that God sovereignly works to bring about all the sin that was redeemed.

01:14:28

So, he's trying to bring in here that God sovereignly brings sin into existence.

01:14:38

So, once again, instead of allowing the biblical full -orb doctrine to stand, you squish it down too low.

01:14:46

It has to be able to be printed on a piece of paper. There can't be any fullness to it.

01:14:52

There can't be any depth. There can't be any relationship between time and eternity. It's all because it's a man -centered thing.

01:14:59

So, that's how man thinks. So, you can't have what you have in the incarnation.

01:15:05

You can't have the eternal dwelling in time. All of that becomes flattened out and made very shallow.

01:15:13

It's not attractive at all. I'll be perfectly honest with you. But that's what you end up with. And that's what the argument here is.

01:15:21

And then, well, God's redeeming what he himself brought into existence. Well, that is sort of the

01:15:27

Christian message. God's redeeming his creation. It is his creation. And what we're told is that the end result is going to be greater than if the fall had not taken place.

01:15:42

There is a revelation of God's character. There is a union of a people with Christ.

01:15:48

There is the incarnation. There is the God -man. All these things would not have happened.

01:15:55

And it was not plan B. This was God's intention. And if you want to try to, you know, flatten that out so as to establish what you think is the most important thing, and that is the autonomous will of man,

01:16:13

I'll leave you to it, but I'm not going to be joining your group. It's an absurd and self -defeating argument.

01:16:19

It would be tantamount to arguing that because a police department set up a sting operation to catch a notorious drug dealer, that the police department...

01:16:26

Okay, so here we go with another Laytonian bad analogy.

01:16:34

Instead of going to Scripture, instead of providing scriptural parameters, instead of providing scriptural examples, what you do is you hope that people will simply accept your analogous...

01:16:51

And it's always drawn from what? Human experience. So when you try to take

01:16:57

God's relationship to time, and all your analogies are based upon man's relationship with time and man's relationship with other men, guess what you're doing?

01:17:08

You are fundamentally limiting what God can do and how

01:17:13

God can do it and how God can be and how God can act. It's not surprising that the result of these analogies is always a very man -centered perspective.

01:17:24

It's somehow responsible for every single intention and action of all drug dealers at all times.

01:17:30

Of course we celebrate and we reward the actions of the police department because they are working to stop drug activity, not because they are secretly bringing about all drug activity just so as to stop some of it.

01:17:43

In the same way, teaching that God brings about all sin based upon how He brought about Calvary or the

01:17:49

Passover or other redemptive events throughout history is like teaching that the police officer brings about every drug dealer and every drug deal based upon how he brought about his sting operations.

01:18:00

Now, with all due respect, this is what passes for deep sound theology today in some

01:18:11

Southern Baptist circles. Maybe it's because in debates very often people don't go back and consider the analogies, but it's really hard to show a lot of respect for that analogy.

01:18:34

So the sting helps to get a drug dealer off the streets.

01:18:42

And so you have a situation where you have an imperfect law and you have imperfect people enforcing that law against sinners and you utilize the desires of sinners against them in a sting operation.

01:19:00

And that somehow is relevant to the idea that God, the idea that in the

01:19:07

Bible since God did a sting operation, is that what the analogy is?

01:19:12

Because in none of those texts, Isaiah 10, it was fulfillment of His holiness and His covenant promises and it was in spite of the attitudes of the

01:19:24

King of Assyria and the pride of His heart. Genesis 50, He's restraining evil,

01:19:29

He's restraining the murderous intent of the brothers and it's part of the satyriological, it's part of bringing about the Messiah.

01:19:35

It's very, very central to what God is doing. Acts chapter 4, where is the parallel?

01:19:41

There is none. No meaningful one. And so what's frightening is that it really,

01:19:51

I really get the feeling that Leighton thinks this is meaningful. And once again, it's real easy for the fire -breathing

01:20:02

Calvinist to look at that and go, that's absurd, therefore,

01:20:08

I will insult this man and I will take upon myself the right to kick this individual out of the kingdom of God.

01:20:19

Just point out where the error is. Hope and pray that he will see that error.

01:20:28

You know what? You know one of the differences here? People say, you're getting soft in your old age.

01:20:34

I'm getting older and one of the wonderful things about getting older is

01:20:42

I get these emails and letters from people and they'll start off saying, you know, 20 years ago,

01:20:51

I hated you. You did such -and -so and I just couldn't believe what you said about it.

01:20:58

I couldn't believe what you said to George Bryson. I couldn't believe what you said back in the 90s about Roman Catholicism.

01:21:03

I was Roman Catholic. But you know what?

01:21:10

I was even nasty to you. I said this or I posted that and you weren't nasty in return.

01:21:19

You pointed me to the truth and moved on and you know what? The Lord's been gracious to me since then and I just want to thank you for that and I want to apologize for the things

01:21:29

I said about you back then and just let you know that I've come to understand the truth of those things.

01:21:35

Maybe that's what the difference is. I don't know. It's possible.

01:21:42

But there you go. Please hear me. If what John Calvin says is true on this particular issue, then

01:21:49

God worked to sovereignly bring about the redemption, for example, of a child abuser in the same way that he worked to sovereignly bring about the abuse of that child.

01:21:58

That is untrue. This is an untrue statement. Leighton has been corrected on this and again, people go, hey, if he's been corrected on it and then he keeps lying about it, doesn't that say, you know, the father of all lies.

01:22:12

Okay, okay. It does not say much for Leighton that he has been corrected on this and will not accept the correction.

01:22:20

Well, what is the correction? No, it's just the same way. This is your equal ultimacy error, which

01:22:27

I'm not sure that the other guys wouldn't necessarily make, or at least one of them, given some of the things he said, but that's neither here nor there.

01:22:33

This is the equal ultimacy type thing. You don't understand the extension.

01:22:42

You claim to have been a Calvinist, but you do not understand the extension of divine grace over how that differs in its nature, in its power, in its foundation from the decree which utilizes the will of man.

01:23:02

It's not the same thing. It's just in the same way that God's extension of grace to the salvation of the elect is not the same as his righteous reprobation and judgment of those who love their sin and who are under his condemnation.

01:23:20

They're not the same thing. And so when people say, oh, he just, you know, it's the exact same thing.

01:23:26

He chooses some, doesn't choose others. It's the exact same. No, it's not. You can pretend it.

01:23:35

You can dishonestly say this to people, but it is still dishonesty. The miraculous extension of saving grace to the elect of God is not the same thing as the righteous, just judgment upon those that God does not extend grace to any more than, and of course we have to, you can always tell when someone is lacking in confidence in their arguments about Calvinism when they pull the child abuser card.

01:24:10

You know, let's try to get the emotions going here. You know, let's go as negative as we possibly can.

01:24:17

Well, you know what? There are people in the church today who were abused as children and they recognize that God has redeemed and sanctified their suffering and their pain to his glory in their lives.

01:24:37

And Leighton Flowers is saying, yeah, it was just an afterthought. Think about that one for a while.

01:24:46

And this flies in the face of so much of what we read in Scripture about the character and the holiness of our

01:24:53

God. You see, on Calvinism, God seems to be sovereignly working so as to redeem his own sovereign workings.

01:25:01

Listen, we can affirm. Did you catch that? Notice the equivocation? He's redeeming his own workings.

01:25:09

So you just flattened it all out. You take man out. You take the purposes of God in his demonstration of his character.

01:25:18

You make the incarnation a joke. You flatten it all out. Just make it absurdly simple so you can create contradictions.

01:25:28

That's all you're seeing here. It's sad, but that's the way it is. God is in heaven and he does whatever pleases him.

01:25:37

That's sovereignty, Psalm 115. We just don't believe that God is pleased to meticulously determine heinous evil in this world.

01:25:47

So, in essence, what you're saying is that God is not particularly pleased to have a purpose in what takes place in this world.

01:25:58

Okay, there you go. Just be straightforward that he wants to have purposeless evil in the world.

01:26:09

Maybe because it's just too much of a hassle to keep up with the rest of it.

01:26:16

I don't know, but just be straightforward with it. That'd be helpful. As verse 16 of the same chapter goes on to confirm, the highest heavens belong to the

01:26:23

Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind. This means it pleases God not to meticulously control everything on earth, but to give the earth over to man, to give his creatures a certain level of autonomy or separateness.

01:26:37

This is, again, a defense of his holiness. Free will, choice, is defending the holiness and the goodness and the character of our

01:26:45

God. Well, that may be what Leighton believes, but he has not established how that is.

01:26:51

How is it a defense of his holiness to deny the reality of his purpose and decree in all of creation?

01:27:03

Only by making man, by exalting man to the center place, can you come up with that argument.

01:27:10

This is a very man -centered theology. We're coming up on 90 minutes here.

01:27:19

Can you imagine how many programs Leighton Flowers is going to do in response to this?

01:27:26

Normally, it's an hour per five minutes of what I said. Could someone run the math on that?

01:27:33

It's going to be big. It's going to be huge. It's going to be huge. 2020?

01:27:41

Oh, go into 2020. I thought you were talking about the ABC thing, 2020. This is why the Lord instructed his followers to pray for God's will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

01:27:50

A prayer that makes little sense, if indeed God is already meticulously controlling all that happens on earth by some quote -unquote sovereign decree.

01:27:59

I want to stop there. Here's a man who claims he was once a Calvinist. There's only two options here,

01:28:05

Leighton. Either you've completely forgotten or you're being dishonest. Because we say the

01:28:13

Lord's Prayer every Sunday as Calvinists. And what you're saying is we've never thought about what it means.

01:28:20

If you're a Calvinist, if you actually believed, then you knew that you pray to be in line with God's purposes.

01:28:31

That your prayer is not changing God, it's changing you. And so when we pray that God's will be done, you say it doesn't have any meaning for you.

01:28:39

I guess you forgot what it meant for a Reformed person. Because what we're longing for is for our thoughts and our desires to be in line with God's.

01:28:53

And we're also longing for that future day when he is going to banish all evil and he is going to bring about that final state when there is no more suffering and no more pain.

01:29:08

So we're doing the now and the not yet thing. I'm sorry that you didn't understand that when you were a faux

01:29:15

Calvinist. But that's the only other option I can see. Either that or you've just forgotten, which is a possibility.

01:29:22

A fair amount of gray there in the beard. So it's a possibility. We're getting up in those years.

01:29:28

But I sort of doubt that's what it is. I just get the feeling you never really understood that. Because you were never really

01:29:33

Reformed. Never mentioned in the pages of Scripture. A distinction has to be drawn between the limitless power of God and how

01:29:40

God chooses to use that power. Sure, he can do whatever he wants. But you can't assume God wants a world of puppets or of robots.

01:29:48

Now let me pause. And again, for me, and he's not trying to convince someone like me.

01:29:54

He's not trying to convince someone who's a regular listener to this program. He knows his arguments aren't sufficient for that. But when you use terms like puppets and robots, again, you've demonstrated that you're not seriously interacting with the multidimensional

01:30:11

Reformed understanding of eternity, time, God's purposes, man's responsibility.

01:30:20

That's, again, Gnostic, puppets, robots. You're done.

01:30:27

Credibility, gone. And again, it depends on what you want to do. I mean, that sounds great for your audience.

01:30:34

And if it's your intention, which I think it is Layton's intention, to try to inoculate people against Calvinism, give them enough of a twisted view of it that they'll never really open their minds to it.

01:30:45

Of course, from a Calvinist perspective, you can't do that. You can be used to keep people from really having a full understanding and hence full enjoyment of biblical theology.

01:30:54

But you can't keep God from revealing his truth to his people. But if that's what you're intending to do, then go for it.

01:31:04

Just say, when I was a Calvinist for a decade, I hated when somebody accused Calvinism of being a puppet world or a robot world.

01:31:12

And you know how I rebutted that? When somebody would bring that to me as a Calvinist, I would say, how dare you, oh man, to talk back to God?

01:31:18

According to Romans 9, Paul says we are mere vessels. We're dirt, we're mud in the hands of a potter.

01:31:25

Now, however... Now, we dealt with this in the Romans 9 thing.

01:31:31

Since time's going by, let me move on. Let me use my cool new thing here and get to some other stuff.

01:31:42

Here is where, because so far I've just been criticizing Leighton, which is not difficult to do, and obviously it's going to be natural for us to do that as we are reformed.

01:31:53

But I haven't had to do so by yelling and screaming, by anything else.

01:31:59

I've tried to be balanced, biblical, let him speak for himself, etc. So now let's take a look at Senator Hernandez's opening.

01:32:08

I'm not going to play the whole thing, I don't have time to. But let's listen to what he has to say.

01:32:14

The debate covers gospel essentials. I need to give a quick disclaimer. This is not going to be an in -house debate, nor are my arguments going to be personal attacks against either of my opponents, because I believe both of them are made in the image of God and are to be treated with dignity and respect.

01:32:29

However, since this debate does cover gospel essentials, I need to make it known very clearly that my arguments are not going to be personal, they will be polemical, because I will not soft -pedal the irrevocable truth of Scripture, especially since I believe my opponent's position tonight stands on tradition and not truth.

01:32:47

And I'll explain to you why. Because I believe God, in his sovereign decree, he predestines.

01:32:53

He has a divine decree. And you know what it is? It's discriminative. It's extensive, eternal. And it is free and absolute.

01:33:00

So either you're going to affirm free grace, or you are going to affirm a false gospel. Let me share with you...

01:33:07

Okay, now, as far as I can tell, you know, and I... This is the first time

01:33:13

I've heard him speak. So maybe elsewhere he has... No, I'm not sure if he's a published author.

01:33:19

I think he might be. I'm sorry. But what you just heard stated,

01:33:27

I can understand on one level. That is, you have God's pure, free grace in Scripture.

01:33:35

And anything other than that, he just said, false gospel. Well, here's again where the issue of category comes in.

01:33:45

And we're struggling a lot with a certain group of people on the issue of accurately using categories and thinking clearly.

01:33:55

Do you mean a false gospel on the same level as the anathemas of Galatians 1?

01:34:04

So when we... You know, where do you make...

01:34:09

Where do you come up with the dividing line at that point? Are there sub -biblical gospels?

01:34:16

Are there understandings of the gospel that are less full?

01:34:24

Let's ask about Amaraldianism. If you're not an Amaraldian...

01:34:29

Amaraldianism is sometimes mistakenly identified as four -point

01:34:34

Calvinism. That's not actually overly accurate. When you really dig deeper into it, there's more to it than that.

01:34:46

But there are four -pointers. There are Amaraldians. Let's just say someone who isn't as strong on the doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement, which

01:34:57

I believe in fully. I've defended many times. I believe it's beautiful. I believe it's vitally important.

01:35:04

But I believe that there are many Christians who don't understand it, misunderstand it, but don't believe it.

01:35:12

Are they Christians? Is that a false gospel? Where do you draw the line here between a false gospel that cannot save and a sub -biblical perspective that we should call people away from?

01:35:28

We want them to glorify God. We want them to glorify God's truth. We want them to be consistent.

01:35:33

We want them to see everything Scripture is teaching. We don't want to see them encased in human tradition, so on and so forth.

01:35:38

But they believe in Jesus. They believe in the necessity of atonement. They believe in justification by faith.

01:35:45

They believe He's coming back. They believe He died for their sins. But they're in error, from our perspective, in a certain area.

01:35:56

Is that a false gospel? My Presbyterian friends believe that it's a sin for me not to baptize my children.

01:36:06

And likewise, I would say that withholding true Christian baptism in the sense of that statement of faith is unbiblical on their part as well.

01:36:18

Do I have to identify them as having a false gospel? Do they have to identify me as having a false gospel?

01:36:23

You see, a lot of people don't even want to think about these things. And in your experience, you never have any interaction with people like that, with people outside your own little realm.

01:36:35

It's real easy to just dismiss all of them, but the body is a lot bigger than you might think it is.

01:36:45

And especially as I've traveled around the world and gotten the opportunity of seeing the church in so many different contexts,

01:36:54

I've realized there's a real danger for us to Americanize the church.

01:37:01

And so my question for Dr. Hernandez is what do you mean by a false gospel?

01:37:09

Are Amaraldians guilty of a false gospel? Where do you draw the line? That's a question

01:37:15

I have. Something very important here, the topic of tonight's debate. What is a biblical view of free will?

01:37:22

My colleague and I are going to argue tonight that there is no such thing as autonomous free will, and that is because we affirm our

01:37:29

Lord's free grace while our opponents affirm libertarian free will. Because that is essentially what this debate is all about, free grace versus free will.

01:37:39

So let me explain to you something about my position on the Arminian position on free will. This is somewhat of a disclaimer

01:37:45

I want to share very quickly so that way you know the position that I'm coming from. There is a classical work out there that is written by Christopher Ness and it's titled

01:37:52

The Antidote to Arminianism. And let me explain to you a little bit about the content you're going to find in that book.

01:37:58

It calls Arminianism a foul heresy, the root and core of all heretical false doctrine. It calls it the great...

01:38:05

Okay, let me just stop there. I'm familiar with the book. It was written in a particular context that would not make sense in many other points in time in history.

01:38:19

So during the Aryan ascendancy after the Council of Nicaea, was Arminianism the root and core of all false doctrine?

01:38:27

Of course not. It had nothing to do with it. Can we really say that Arminianism is the root and core of all false doctrine?

01:38:35

No. That's hyperbole at best. And in a day where we're dealing with so many challenges, this is one of them.

01:38:49

The idea of the autonomy of man in the transgender movement and things like that.

01:38:56

Oh, very central, but that's not really Arminianism. So when you see the necessity out of fairness and just simple clear thinking to make proper distinctions, oh my, will people come after you?

01:39:15

Will people come after you? We've got, you know, I can start down the list of the people who refuse to make proper distinctions and to be careful and to be, who are going after us right now.

01:39:29

And so we can't do that going the other direction. We can't do that going the other direction. Now, one of my problems here, this is rather ahistorical because Popery and the

01:39:50

Roman system predate Arminianism. I agree that in its fullest form,

01:39:55

Arminianism is a return. It's turning away from the central aspect of the

01:40:02

Reformation in regards to God's sovereign grace, the fallen nature of man, the bondage of the will, all those things.

01:40:09

It has led many back to the bosom of Rome. There's no question about that. And how many times have

01:40:14

I pointed out the parallels between Leighton Flower's teaching and Rome's teaching?

01:40:20

Because they are very, they agree. They stand hand in hand in opposing the

01:40:27

Reformation proclamation on the bondage of the will. He would find himself accepted in any

01:40:34

Roman Catholic context like that. Agree a thousand percent, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an ahistorical element of making

01:40:43

Arminianism prior to Popery because the concept of the papacy and the things relevant to that long precede the rise of Arminianism.

01:40:53

Modern Arminianism is but ancient Pelagianism, and Pelagianism is Popery, and Popery is another name for man's free will in opposition to God's free grace.

01:41:02

So there are elements of truth here, but there's also a great danger of sloganeering because if you don't make clear distinctions between Pelagianism and semi -Pelagianism, if you don't understand the

01:41:16

Council of Orange, if you don't understand the development of Roman Catholic theology and sacramentarianism and so on and so forth up to the time of the

01:41:22

Reformation, it's very, very easy to just make this kind of bold statement. It's just Pelagianism.

01:41:28

And then the other side can come along and say, well, actually, and then they've got 47 ,000 quotes from careful scholars that will demonstrate that it's not

01:41:36

Pelagianism specifically, but you have semi -Pelagianism.

01:41:42

And, of course, you have moving targets of people like Leighton Flowers who, like I said, sometimes dances right off into Pelagianism and then right back into semi -Pelagianism and exactly where he ends up landing is hard to say.

01:41:53

But the point is, when you use this kind of sloganeering, you open yourself up to refutation.

01:42:00

You have to be careful. Now, when you're careful, you don't sound as confident and let's get the popcorn out and let's rip them

01:42:10

Arminians. You sound namby -pamby in some people's thinking for some reason. But I sort of think the gospel requires that level of care.

01:42:19

I think that's sort of important. Also, I stand with men like Augustus Toplety. He argued very distinctly that Arminianism came from the

01:42:27

Church of Rome and leads back to the pit from whence it was dug. Now, here's why I stand with that position about God's eternal decree because God is absolutely sovereign.

01:42:36

He is an electing, eternal, and immutable judge and nothing comes to pass outside of his eternal decree. God, from all eternity, he has decreed in himself all things whatsoever comes to pass and this is according to his eternal and immutable counsel of his free will.

01:42:52

Now, let me explain to you something here about this. When you say, well, my will must precede God's grace, let me explain to you something.

01:42:59

The grace of God, he will not bow, be subjected, suppress, he will not yield to anyone or anything since he does not derive his glory from anyone.

01:43:07

Now, like I said, I saw some of this and then

01:43:14

I listened to all of it while I did a 5K this morning and I even had to sort of stop and go, is this the same section

01:43:25

I looked at? Because if you just listen, if you're listening to this right now, you're hearing one thing.

01:43:30

If you're watching it, there's a, am I wrong? There's a snarl on his face.

01:43:38

There's a, that doesn't come through in the voice and it's amazing the impact that has upon how you hear what he's saying.

01:43:49

When I first watched it, I'm like, wow, that's a lot different than what I would say. And then when I listen to it, it's like, oh, okay, well,

01:43:55

I wouldn't say that, but it is fascinating to me. I have a bunch of stuff to get to here.

01:44:02

I apologize for how long this is taking. Then here is

01:44:07

Theodore, well, I'll just play it and we'll go from there.

01:44:14

Even less than nothing. Let me ask you this. Man, who are you?

01:44:21

Are you a member of a nation? Yes. Does it matter which nation? No, because all the nations are nothing before this

01:44:28

God. And you as an individual, do you think that the mighty nations through history that are nothing, indeed less than nothing before God, that you puny man, you can thwart the will of God?

01:44:44

Absolutely not. Who would dare to take such a position? Here they are, these two gentlemen have.

01:44:50

They believe that God's will to save can be thwarted by someone that is less than nothing.

01:44:58

Why listen to this? This, according to Calvinistic history, is heresy, my friends.

01:45:05

Okay. You're in a Lutheran church.

01:45:10

This, according to Calvinistic history, is heresy, my friends. Who are you trying to convince here?

01:45:18

I mean, no questioning the man's passion, but what are you trying to accomplish here?

01:45:31

According to Calvinistic history? I mean,

01:45:37

I guess I could see myself in a church history class using that phrase, not screaming, but I could use,

01:45:44

I'm not even sure what Calvinistic history is at that point. What do you mean according? Anyway, it just gives you an idea of the fervor of the presentation from Brother Zachariadis.

01:45:59

Let's press on. We don't have a whole lot of time here. I think, all right, let's just, ah,

01:46:07

I wanted to get Pritchett in here at some point. All right. As you know, the big question tonight is what is the

01:46:13

Biblical view of free will? Our opponents have answered that there is no Biblical view of free will. They have accused us tonight of tradition, not truth.

01:46:20

However, I find it ironic that in the week of celebrating the Reformation, they gave us nothing but tradition and no argument.

01:46:28

All they did was get on this stage, yell real loud, and set a straw man on fire. They talked about the sovereignty of God, but I don't believe they actually know what the word means.

01:46:35

The word means that God is sovereign. He is an absolute authority. Now, if our opponents want to be like the

01:46:40

LGBT community and redefine words like marriage to mean between two people, and they want to redefine sovereignty to mean something like determinism,

01:46:48

I would like them to be upfront about it and just stop using the word sovereignty because it doesn't mean what they seem to imply that it means.

01:46:54

Okay, now, this is, I was not impressed.

01:47:02

I've never heard of this gentleman before, but if it was his intention to make any type of impression upon someone who actually knows

01:47:12

Reformed theology or knows debate, didn't make any impression there at all.

01:47:20

There wasn't any reason to throw in LGBTQ, and the very fact that he stumbled over it indicates he knows what he's doing, that he knew that it was a cheap shot.

01:47:31

But I don't know where he's getting this rather mundane definition of sovereignty.

01:47:43

In Daniel chapter four, for example, when Nebuchadnezzar gives that incredible testimony to God's sovereignty, it is active, and the connection between what

01:47:57

God does in time and his rule, you cannot connect. I just can't believe that this man is actually suggesting that the use of term sovereignty is somehow unbiblical when the idea of rulership and kingship is central to exactly what we're talking about in regards to God.

01:48:13

It's not some, well, God has the right to do things, just doesn't tell us what he's doing. Well, God is sovereign enough to not be sovereign.

01:48:20

These are absurd statements from an Old Testament perspective. A king reigns. He reigns over his realm.

01:48:26

This is his realm. God reigns over that which he has made. He is the creator of all things. This idea is just simply absurd, and it's rather offensive, but it's so often couched in this kind of faux argumentation that Pritchett gives.

01:48:43

It means that God is ruler. They say this is a debate between free grace and free will.

01:48:49

No, it's not. That is a false dichotomy. Free grace is the grace of God that has appeared to all men.

01:48:56

That is free. Now, I did want to stop right there. Where's that phrase from?

01:49:03

It's from Titus chapter 2. Read Titus chapter 2 carefully, and you will see that the grace which has come to all men teaches us certain things.

01:49:12

It's saving grace. So this is either universalism or he's completely missed the specificity of the grace that is mentioned in Titus chapter 2.

01:49:22

That's the problem with debates is that that's why

01:49:27

I'm so concerned that they be recorded correctly so that someone can stop and start and look it up and go, ah,

01:49:34

I totally misused that. That's actually not what it says at all. And in my mind, when

01:49:39

I'm doing debates, when I hear my opponent doing things like that, I know that in my time, I'm not going to have the time to be able to get to everything.

01:49:47

So I have to trust. I have to trust that the people who are going to be careful and serious students in the audience, which may be a minority, are going to look these things up, check these things out.

01:49:59

That's the only way that you can do it. Okay. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Okay.

01:50:07

We'll at least get started with this. We're not going to get it done. I might actually have to carry this over to another program.

01:50:13

But here was the cross -acts. And I've said many, many times that debates take place in cross -examination if it's done right, if there is a meaningful exchange, if the side asking questions does it right, if the side answering the questions doesn't try to filibuster.

01:50:36

If you want an example of that, just look at John Shelby Spong in our debate, filibustering. And if the moderator can control the two sides, that didn't happen here.

01:50:48

So what we get here is a theological food fight. And at times, you can't even hear it because they didn't bother with the microphones.

01:51:02

And so you get four guys in an echoey room that could have just as well gone to Starbucks and took the seat and took the table in the corner and done this there because it doesn't benefit almost anybody else.

01:51:16

It's like they completely lost track of the audience. And one thing you can certainly tell when

01:51:24

I'm in cross -examination, I don't lose track of the audience. They're still my central focus.

01:51:31

And unfortunately, that wasn't the case here. Just to understand in my mind where y 'all are coming from because I couldn't quite discern that from your opening statement since it made very little sense.

01:51:40

Do you affirm the London Baptist Confession of 1689 or do you affirm something beyond that as in a kind of necessity fatalism view of providence?

01:51:52

Yeah, I'll say. We affirm the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith as a summarization of faith, an affirmation of worship, a teaching outline, a guard against heresy.

01:52:02

We affirm it also as a means of edification. We're not looking to the London Baptist Confession to be equally authoritative with the

01:52:08

Bible, so no. But we do affirm the London Baptist Confession as merely a means of edification and just so that we have a clarity of scripture.

01:52:17

So you do believe or you do affirm that chapter 9 has a definition of free will?

01:52:27

Yes. And you don't believe that that contradicts what you said tonight about no such thing exists?

01:52:32

Not at all, because it also says in the Westminster Confession it also says that we have effectual calling. In other words, it's a monergistic calling.

01:52:38

It's not merely an individual choosing salvation, but God has to subdue the heart, draw the center to himself, and call that center.

01:52:46

Now at this point, I understand what Sonny Hernandez is saying, and that is that what the confession is talking about is a free creaturely will in Adam that has fallen in all of his posterity and therefore utterly in the need of effective grace, effectual calling.

01:53:10

I get it. I'm not sure that Theodore is on the same page as Sonny at this point. When it says God hath subdued the will of man with the natural liberty and power of acting upon choice that is neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil, do you affirm that statement?

01:53:26

We affirm the Bible, sir. We don't affirm anything that takes precedent. that you sent me. Look, hey, I didn't come here tonight to debate what the confession says.

01:53:34

We came to debate what the Bible says. Leave the confession alone and let's get back to the Bible. But we're trying to get a clearer understanding of your view.

01:53:39

We do not affirm free will, sir. That's it. Well, I understand you don't. You said the statements made no sense.

01:53:45

I'm telling you, is it clear now? We do not affirm free will. That much I said before I asked the first question.

01:53:51

I asked about your view of providence, not free will. I asked if you affirm the confession because he said so and then

01:53:57

I asked you what your view of providence, which is not the same thing as free will. So if you could answer the question about providence.

01:54:03

We affirm providence from scripture. Okay, but we're trying to get a definition of what that is. You still haven't defined what you believe is free will. Yes, I believe that Ephesians 1 .11

01:54:10

clarifies our position. So you don't believe there is any free will yet the confession that you say you adopt, it gives a definition in chapter 9 of free will and it gives

01:54:18

Can you please put the confession away? We're not here to discuss the confession. Okay, then can you give us a definition? Okay, now at this point

01:54:23

I'm lost. Without definitions, there can be no discussion and simply sitting there saying we're just going to talk about the

01:54:34

Bible doesn't make any sense to me at all. I mean, this is supposed to be a debate and I've been in this situation where the opposite was.

01:54:44

I was trying to get the other person to take a stance so you can hold them accountable to scripture and they just refused to do it and the result's always disastrous.

01:54:55

That's what I couldn't understand is a pulpit in Penn was going like, oh yeah, man didn't let them drag them off the subject.

01:55:02

Oh man, get some popcorn out. Snap, that's great. And I'm just sitting here going, hmm.

01:55:07

Okay. I mean, I'm sorry. I seem to see a division here.

01:55:15

Maybe I'm wrong between Sonny and Theodore. I get the feeling that Sonny starts off trying to be consistent with that and Theodore's like, no, we're not going here.

01:55:25

We just don't affirm free will. Well, then what do you affirm about the nature of the will?

01:55:33

And he's going to say a little bit later on, we do not believe in compatibilism. And I was sort of like, okay.

01:55:57

Okay, mistake number one. You're being asked the questions and you turn around with a rhetorical question for the other side.

01:56:06

Mistake number two, they take the bait and now you have a free -for -all.

01:56:12

The moderator should be like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. This side's asking questions, the other side's answering questions.

01:56:17

Please try to be responsive and da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. Otherwise, it just, it falls apart.

01:56:25

That work in the present for all things after the counsel of his will. So everything that comes to pass is after the counsel of his will.

01:56:30

No, God works with everything that comes to pass. No, that's not what it says. Now, finally, the moderator steps in.

01:56:36

Now, by the way, that interpretation of Ephesians 1 .11 was extremely weak. There should have been, instead of answering with rhetorical questions, you go after the obvious error that had just been made in Ephesians 1 .11

01:56:52

because he tried to limit that. He's working with what takes place. That's not how Ephesians 1 .11

01:56:58

fits with what everything came before that. You go back to it and nail him on that.

01:57:04

But again, there wasn't a lot of exegesis or biblically -based stuff here. That's not how

01:57:23

I would define providence. You have to differentiate between providence, which is, God has his decree, and then as he chooses to act in time as a part of that decree, that action in time is that providence.

01:57:38

It's what we see in time of the essence of God's decree. So, unfortunately, that's a rough time to have to stop, but we've tortured everybody for two hours now.

01:57:56

I think I can find this again. In fact, I can just put a note here. About where we are.

01:58:07

Just might pick it up on the next program, on Thursday, I believe, and finish it off then.

01:58:17

I was only going to listen to the rest of the cross -acts and then that wild statement from Leighton about us creating

01:58:26

Criatio, Ex and Hilo. We could get that done pretty quickly and move on to other subjects.

01:58:34

Just in closing, the strongest, most

01:58:46

God -honoring defense of God's truth is one that gets the debater, the speaker, out of the way and allows

01:58:59

God's truth to be communicated to the audience, to be used by the

01:59:05

Spirit to encourage believers and to convict unbelievers. If you get yourself in the way, then you're diminishing the end result of what you want to do.

01:59:20

And so, what some people call Namby Pamby is actually, seemingly, the consistent idea that if you're going to present the doctrines of grace, you might want to do so with grace.

01:59:36

There is no basis, there is no grounds, there is no reason to present the doctrines of grace ungraciously.

01:59:47

And it certainly seemed to me that that was what was being promoted and reveled in and celebrated in the pulpit and pen news division article.

02:00:04

And that's very troubling and I will allow our review to stand on its own at that point.

02:00:11

So, we'll continue this next time. It won't be a Radio Free Geneva, so we won't play all the music, but we'll continue it next time and then move on to other issues.